I report on the ways financial value can learn to play nice with "softer" values (like concerns about climate change, inequality, and extreme poverty), which can often seem unrelated to, even at odds with, your wallet-focused worries. The market exploding around impact investing (aka green investing, sustainable investing, responsible investing, etc.) suggests that it may actually be possible to do well by doing good, as long as you know where to look. I've written about this space for Institutional Investor, Responsible Investor, and Natural Capital, and have also been published in The Atlantic, Psychology Today, NationSwell, Narratively, and elsewhere. I teach as an adjunct professor of journalism at Manhattanville College.

5 Ways To Ensure Your Money Doesn't Contradict Your Social Values

What has your money been up to lately? Spending time lining the pockets of CEOs whose business practices you find virulent, or maybe helping to pay for the marketing of products you consider dangerous or unsustainable? Or perhaps it’s on another continent, vacationing with a violent regime. If pressed, could you say what in the world your money is supporting?

Anyone who pays into a retirement fund, invests in the stock market, or holds a bank account has a role, however slight, in shaping our financial system— though most people can say more about what’s wrong with that system than they can about their specific role in it. The real-world impacts of our own investing and banking decisions often seem so abstract that we can convince ourselves we’re not really connected to them at all, removing any urgent need to change our financial practices—or even to understand what we might be able to change, if we cared to.

It is possible to redirect your money’s social and environmental ties, even if a lack of understanding too often obscures that fact. In a recent New Yorker essay about learning the language of money, John Lanchester wrote that “when it comes to discussing money, incomprehension is a form of consent,” adding: “If we allow ourselves not to understand this language, we are signing off on the way the world works today.”

If you’re not thrilled with the status quo and are wondering what you can do to line up your money’s values with your own, read on.

Smokestacks from a wartime production plant (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Take a close look at what you’re invested in, and decide: Are you okay with this?

It’s not just you: Lots of people blindly funnel their money into investments they haven’t thought much about, whether through their company’s 401(k), an investment advisor or via some other means. A number of campaigns have sprung up in recent years to fight that investor passivity: Unload Your 401k formed after the December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School to encourage those advocating for enhanced gun control laws to check into whether they have financial stakes in gun manufacturers. 350.org has been making a widespread push for people to get out of their financial holdings in fossil fuel producers as a way to amplify the conversation around climate change. Investors Against Genocide seeks to raise awareness about the companies whose funds have been tied to the ongoing violence in Sudan, and suggests ways investors can make their money “genocide-free.”

It doesn’t take much to educate yourself on your own investment holdings. If you’re invested in a mutual fund—either through your company’s 401(k) or through another means—the best way to do this is by opening your fund’s annual or semi-annual report (most can be found online) and perusing the companies listed in the “Schedule of Investments” section. You can also sign up for an annual subscription on Morningstar.com to easily search for your fund and dig through its holdings.

2. Put your money into a mutual fund that cares about social impact.

You’ll go a step further if you decide to move into a mutual fund that explicitly makes an effort to be socially responsible. This often means its managers are both making an effort to find investments tied to produce positive effects, as well as avoiding whatever is deemed as negative.

Begin by surveying your options: This chart from the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment lists more than 150 socially responsible mutual funds, with corresponding performance information and details about what is screened out and what positive impacts managers are seeking.

What if you’re invested in your company’s 401(k), and you’re not seeing a socially responsible option listed among your menu options? You’ll have to follow up with your company’s investment committee and request that such an option be added. Jennifer Lazarus, a Durham, North Carolina-based financial planner whose specialties include socially responsible financial strategies, says one of her clients actually joined her company’s investment committee to have a hand in this decision, and was eventually successful in getting one socially responsible mutual fund option into her company’s 401(k) mix. “This comes from the ground up,” Lazarus says. “It’s not going to come from retirement consultants.”

Green America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for sustainability values in the marketplace, offers this free guide for employees eager to add socially focused funds to their employers’ retirement plans.

Here’s a sampling of shareholder resolutions from 2014 that have failed to attract majority support from a company’s voting stock owners: A resolution that would require Bank of America to report on its lobbying activities (30 percent voted in favor); one that would require ExxonMobil to establish goals for the reduction of greenhouse gasses (22 percent in favor); and one that would require Motorola to write and adopt a more comprehensive human rights policy (not quite 6 percent in favor).

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